The new rules say that claimants must be prepared to accept jobs that pay less and are outside their previous occupation. "Frequent" EI claimants are required to accept any job within a one-hour commute, even if it pays up to 30 percent less than their previous job.

Labour groups throw support behind Chief Theresa Spence and Idle No More

Several labour groups have come out in support of the indigenous Idle No More movement and the hunger strike of Theresa Spence, Chief of Attawapiskat First Nation. Chief Spence vowed not to eat until Prime Minister Harper agrees to meet directly with her and other First Nations chiefs -- a meeting which today he announced will take place next Friday.

Almost all of us miss NHL hockey some of the time. And some of us miss it all of the time: players, owners, sports journalists. But its absence may also be a covert present in this gifting season: a chance to rebalance and recalibrate the place of hockey in our culture.

You see that imbalance in references to missing "hockey" and yearning for "hockey" to return. Yet it's only NHL hockey that's lacking. This is the result of a stealth coup by the NHL: it's made itself equivalent to hockey altogether.

Don't

Quick, before this hockey crisis goes away, I'd like to act quickly to try and wrestle some ideas from it, instead of wasting it.

What's eternally awesome is the way individual souls meld with their team. The identification is local, not national, except for rare Olympian moments. And it's with the team, not just players and definitely not owners. It transcends generations and absences. I once left Toronto for 10 years, pre-Internet when it was harder to keep contact, and when I returned I picked up exactly the same feelings of frustration with the Leafs and Argos as before, although entire rosters had been replaced, like the cells of a human body every seven years. The ongoing agony was seamless.